Nairobi - agree completely, for purely hypothetical reasons, can you provide me with a situation, where you'd think haste would be better for our survival as opposed to having more stam?

When you reach a point where the spells that a boss casts outside of those mega nukes (aka slow ticking dots and melee hits) is non-threatening, stamina loses its value.

At this point mastery is the king of survivability stats if you are dieng constantly and haste takes a close back seat.[COLOR="red"]

Originally Posted by Todyn

But, that's just the point Stam, is by far, the most important stat for damage mitigation and its even more important to look at the top progression raiders because survivability is an issue for them. Only when the threat of dying is no longer a major concern, do we start going the full haste route.

Mastery reduces the damage the most for those mega hits. (in % of your HP)
Haste reduces the damage the best between the big hits and make the time outside the big hits less threatening.
Stamina is only better when the damage you take outside the big hits and when your SotR is down is actually dangerous. A.k.a. when you can die on the bosses "low damage" part. This usually happens more in 25 man because boss melees harder in 25 man, this is partially why 25's want more stamina than 10's usually, and why stamina is actually kinda bad in 10 in comparison to haste and mastery.

Not to mention the added dps from haste.

Edit: Just as an example. If you are at say 50% SotR. Which is kinda standard. As long as you have more than 450k health, mastery is better than stamina for reducing the high damage abilities per point at gem exchange rates. 1:0.75

To be clear: For 10 mans I wouldn't suggest gemming stamina, but changing one trink for stam one isn't too big of a crime. Stamina isn't solving all the survivability issues by no means, but neither is going for full haste in any way "going for better survivability". Yeah, you get more HoPo and that way better ShoR uptime, but if you play "correctly" and pool the HoPo for ShoRing for the telegraphed nukes you'll have the HoPo available even with little less haste. Haste is a good survivability stat and the best dps stat, but you can't just throw a blanket "Go for max haste, and if you die, it's just because you suck"-statement and be done with it. There are times when on HC Ji-Kun I've died to boss melee after mitigated second Talon Rake + tick from the stacking debuff which would have been avoided if I had just little more hp, or if my SS had procked, or a heal landed, etc. Speaking based on a gut feeling based on your experiences doesn't really mean that much, since it's all empirical, and peoples observations have a tendecy of favoring the occurences that support their view on a matter. Considering the fact that even at best we're propably discussing about shifting the last 5 or 10% or so of our survivability where 90% of it comes from playing correctly, it might be said that you propably couldn't tell a difference on survival running either gear set.

Please don't resort to hyperbole trying to make a point pro haste + crit gear, since changing those few pieces to more tanky gear doesn't drop your dps from 90k to 40k. It might be even 5k, but I doubt that it'd be more than that.

Oh, and never did I suggest picking up dodge + parry items and being happy with them. Rarely (can't think of any) there is only dodge + parry or haste + crit items to choose to a slot.

If you look at what the TOP protection paladins were gemming for progression kills, aka Method/Exodus/Blood Legion, ALL of their paladin tanks were gemming stam, and even had double stam trinkets (this applies not only to Ra-den)

The only exception to that may be Slootbag from Midwinter, who I believe at the time of their progression kill was still going full haste.

@Nairobi - agree completely, for purely hypothetical reasons, can you provide me with a situation, where you'd think haste would be better for our survival as opposed to having more stam?

Sorry, just got back in from a long weekend, and catching up now. As for your question, in 10M HC, I think haste is better for our performance and mitigation than stamina, hands down, in every fight (minus RaDen, due to mechanics). I think Stam is better for survival, on every fight. I guess that may have been unclear, esp since the words "survival" and "mitigation" tend to get lumped together far too often these days. Stamina doesn't mitigate anything, it simply makes you take less of your total health in damage, by way of increasing the pool to work with. However, once you reach "that point", which varies wildly from person to person and raid to raid, excess stamina doesn't benefit you nearly as much as putting those points into mitigation or performance stats, like haste.

Originally Posted by rhandric

For survivability, stam is king. But, while from a purely mathematical standpoint stam is always stronger for survivability than any other stat, from a "real-world" perspective, stam has effective diminishing returns, but on a per-player, per-raid group basis. If you constantly die, more stam helps. If you're at a point where, at no time in progression are you at risk to die, then you've gotten to the point where more stam effectively does nothing. Of course, if adding more stam allows you to change raid comp (ie, one less healer), and such a thing is possible, then more stam can be more effective, as long as the added dps adds more to the raid dps than you switching to stacking, i.e., haste.

And looking at what the cutting edge progression raiders do doesn't mean much - they're pushing content in lower gear than it's designed around, so stack stam to make up for the fact their gear doesn't have that additional stam by default. That's not to say additional stam above what comes on gear isn't needed, but that you have to look at the reason for why they stack stam, rather than just the fact that they do.

Basically what he said, just 2 days late. Additionally, bleeding edge tanks will be significantly less geared at the time of attempting content than us mere mortals. There is a stam-threshold for the damage of said boss, which must be met (as discussed above) before you can focus on performance/mitigation. Since they have less overall ilvl at the time of those attempts than, say, me, they will need to find every avenue possible to get their HP to that threshold. When Trekkie/Absalom/Sloot were doing RaDen or even LS HC, they had to reach 900k (example) HP in 25man, with probably an ilvl of 524-526. When soemone today is doing those fights, they are probably ~535 ilvl, and have a much easier time reaching that HP pool. Those excess stats from the ilvl inflation mean they can pile on haste via gems/trinkets, effectively not "stam-stacking" at that point, simply due to their gear level.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

To be honest, I would disagree that stam is king on every fight. Just take a fight like Durumu for example.

Both haste and mastery is far better for survivability than stamina. Really hands down.

Mastery shines on those hard stares, will make the DoT tick for a shorter amount of time and just helps you so much.
Haste also favors a lot from the MS effect, the extra absorbs is great aswell as the increased SotR uptime.

I often had paladins on my realm ask me or tips or help. The first thing I touched is often their gearing. Now this is from a 10 man point of view.
I always ask them. On a scale of 1-10,

How good to you press your rotation
How fast do you press your buttons i.e. dead GCDs
How good are you with timing SotR.

Those are the 3 important questions. Depending on your answer, your general "best survival stat" will differ.

If you do not press your buttons fast, i.e. have a lot of dead GCDs. Haste does nothing for you. Say you can have 200 GCDs in a fight. with haste, that number increasese to 250 GCDs. If you are only hitting 120 of those 200 GCDs to start with. You wont suddenly start hitting 170 GCDs because your new haste level allows you to make 50 more GCDs, no, you will probably make the exact same amount or maybe 5 more.

So if you do not press your buttons fast, haste is rather useless.

Being bad at your rotation favors haste. Being good at your rotation favors both haste and mastery.
Being good at timing your SotR favors mastery, hands down. Being bad at timing your SotR favors haste and stamina.

There are also of course more depth into this, when to cap exp or not etc.

The only time I would say stamina is king, is when you find yourself dieng between your SotRs. If the boss melee hits kills you between the big hits or simply you drop dead between on SotR do another while taking no other damage than regular melee hits, then you need more stamina. As long as you dont die outside of SotR, you do not need more stamina.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

The only time I would say stamina is king, is when you find yourself dieng between your SotRs. If the boss melee hits kills you between the big hits or simply you drop dead between on SotR do another while taking no other damage than regular melee hits, then you need more stamina. As long as you dont die outside of SotR, you do not need more stamina.

I think that's the general point I'm trying to make. You need stamina to get to a level where you can survive a hit or 2 between AM. That's the "baseline pool" I was talking about earlier. After that, stamina's relative value declines. Each player's pool will vary based on gear, skill, raid, and content, but no matter how much haste or mastery you're sporting, if you don't meet that baseline need first, you'll be a spot on the floor.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Yeah, I agree with you. I just disagree with this "stam is king" mentality so many people have. I would not gain more survivability by getting more stamina in my current gear and performance. If I for some reason need stamina, I just switch in a stamina trinket. Though that almost never happens. Except during first week on Tortos, needed more than 600k hp to solo tank tortos+bats.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

Yeah, I agree with you. I just disagree with this "stam is king" mentality so many people have. I would not gain more survivability by getting more stamina in my current gear and performance. If I for some reason need stamina, I just switch in a stamina trinket. Though that almost never happens. Except during first week on Tortos, needed more than 600k hp to solo tank tortos+bats.

Well yea, because you're already above that level for survival (post week 1, by your admission). Which, frankly, in 10m comes almost innately from gear alone if you have a modicum of timing/skill. I think the "Stam is King" mentality is right, provided you finish the sentence. "Stam is King, until you have enough to live. Then go haste".

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Well yea, because you're already above that level for survival (post week 1, by your admission). Which, frankly, in 10m comes almost innately from gear alone if you have a modicum of timing/skill. I think the "Stam is King" mentality is right, provided you finish the sentence. "Stam is King, until you have enough to live. Then go haste".

The thing was (is) on Tortos normal, is that when solo tanking, 350k hp is practically dead. So if I had 600k hp, my health pool was basically 250k, since if I dropped more then 350k, then almost for sure death. So Tortos is an exception to the rule, due to having a mechanic heavily favoring stamina due to lowering your health pool.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.